Office dresser Louis XV, called the "scriban" in solid walnut Eighteenth century

Biography

The history of the chest of drawers
A dictionary from 1760 gives an amusing definition of the chest of drawers: it is a piece of furniture of very new invention which its convenience quickly made very common.

In reality, the chest of drawers, born from the need for rational storage, already existed in the 17th century. As for the word, it appears for the first time in 1708 in a letter from the Duke of Antin who declares having admired at Guillemart two chests of drawers in tortoiseshell and pewter veneer being made for the King's bedroom in Marly. Louis XIV period chest of drawers. A dictionary from 1760 gives an amusing definition of the chest of drawers: it is a piece of furniture of very new invention which its convenience quickly made very common. In reality, the chest of drawers, born from the need for rational storage, already existed in the 17th century.
As for the word, it appears for the first time in 1708 in a letter from the Duke of Antin who declares having admired at Guillemart two chests of drawers in tortoiseshell and pewter veneer being made for the King's bedroom at Marly. Louis XIV period chest of drawers Previously, we only talked about boxes with drawers. Until the 19th century, the chest of drawers was an expensive piece of furniture reserved for the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, it hardly found its way into the homes of modest people. The so-called Louis XVI chest of drawers, with simple and refined forms, was born under Louis XV, in the middle of the 18th century after the discovery of the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii and the return to favor of the antique style. The book by the haberdasher Lazare Duvaux tells us that, in 1753, Madame de Pompadour ordered three Greek-style chests of drawers from him.
This simplification of forms will increase over the years until, in the last years of the reign, the jump inherited from the Transition period disappears. The bronzes are discreet. They are sometimes replaced by a simple copper rod. It must be said that as technology has progressed, assemblies no longer need to be hidden. The tapered legs are fluted, the spinning top legs indicating late manufacture. Another model of Louis XVI mahogany chest of drawers, the half-moon in the shape of a semi-circle. Louis XVI period mahogany half-moon chest of drawers, model which was generally intended to be leaned against a trumeau. The Louis XVI mahogany chest of drawers was very popular at the end of the 18th century and it was manufactured until 1820 using the same processes to the point that it is sometimes difficult to date it.
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The Lyonnaise chest of drawers in the 18th century
The chest of drawers appeared at the end of the 17th century. It bore its current name from 1708 and became the most widely manufactured piece of furniture. The Pitti Palace, in Florence, contains a chest of drawers dating from 1550. In Savoy, there are Louis XIII chests of drawers. Provence invented the crossbow chest of drawers, that is to say with a double projection front. Dauphiné has chests of drawers with “pleated” fronts, with several projections.
Officially, this piece of furniture was born in Paris in 1695. The first chests of drawers recall their origin: the cabinet, a successful piece of furniture in the 12th century, a box with numerous small drawers behind two doors, and placed on a high base. The chest of drawers is a box placed almost on the ground, on short legs, offering three large drawers. Its name comes from the fact that it proved so practical that it enjoyed rapid and significant success. Non-existent in rural areas, it invades various French towns. Of all the regional chests of drawers, the best known is that of Bordeaux, characterized by its pot-bellied appearance. The first chests of drawers are rather cubic (or exactly orthohedral, rectangular parallelepipeds) with straight uprights and sides, a silhouette which corresponds well to the taste of Lyon, where the first type of Lyonnaise chest of drawers appears in this appearance, the most characteristic. Rectangular in plan, it has a slightly curved facade. Like the cabinets, it has larger dimensions than the Parisian chests of drawers (1.28 m): 1.33 m wide by 0.63 cm deep. It is entirely made of walnut, including the top, which is never marble or “stone”.
It already has a decor specific to all Lyon chests of drawers: moldings divide the front of the drawers into three, like the cabinet doors, with a smaller central panel. A sculpted motif adorns each end and quite often frames the keyhole. The Lyon chest of drawers also knows the crossbow front and even the pleated front. Finally, more rarely, it goes beyond its limits and its rectangular plan to offer itself a rounded plan, also called scalloped, with a façade and a potbelly profile, less so than the Bordeaux. According to some acceptance, it is called a tomb, although other specialists use this name for any chest of drawers with three or four drawers and short legs. A very Lyonnais base consists of fairly strongly arched legs, marked by a protruding edge.
There is nothing rustic about Lyonnais furniture. It influenced the furniture of the surrounding countryside but it was only aimed at rich bourgeois people, bankers, silk workers, large merchants, the nobility in this large city practically not existing under the Ancien Régime. The Lyonnais furniture is part of a structure perfectly located on the ground. The sculpted ornamentation is inspired by models imported from the capital. The scrolls, a contemporary expression of arabesques, are influenced by the creations of Jean Bérain (1639/1711), designer of the king's bedroom, whose decorations mark the transition between Louis XIV and the Regency. The newer shells followed closely, soon accompanied by the lace sculpture developed by Parisian ornamentalists. But the laurel branches, so frequent, are typically Lyonnais; and they were already suggested in Renaissance sideboards.
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Louis XV style
The Regency style gave rise to one of the most imaginative styles in the history of decorative arts, known as rocaille or rococo.

This differs essentially from the Baroque by its lightness and its horror of symmetry. Rococo, with its penchant for whimsy, was widely used by French artisans from 1720 to around 1755-60.

Unbridled imagination is the basis of this new decorative style, in which the dominant motifs are rocks, shells, flowers and foliage. The key words are contrast and asymmetry. From 1730, the movement accelerated and found wider diffusion thanks to the works of ornamentalists such as Gilles-Marie Oppenord and Jules Aurlèle Meissonnier, both authors of drawings with the most extravagant shapes. Among the most fervent cabinetmakers of Rococo, there is necessarily Gaudreaux, one of the leading craftsmen of the time with whom the Crown placed numerous orders. Secondly, when the Louis XV style reached its maturity around the 1750s, Rococo evolved towards a certain softening of forms and above all towards a real simplification of its traditional motifs.

Freed from its first exaggerations and the agitation that characterized it, the style adopts larger curves with a calmer rhythm. Certain artisans working in this pure Louis XV style have produced some of the masterpieces of French furniture. The best known cabinetmaker of this period is probably Jean-François Oeben, whose apprentice is none other than the famous Jean-Henri Riesener, champion of the future Louis XVI style, perhaps the greatest craftsman of all time. Other famous names are Joseph Baumhauer, Lacroix, Jacques Dubois, Saunier, Jean-François Leleu and Bernard Van Riesenburgh. In the 18th century, the joint idea of ​​comfort and intimacy, hitherto unknown, became crucial. The consequences of this change in mentalities are firstly the reduction in the size of living rooms, then the adaptation of furniture to this new space.

The emphasis is no longer on grandeur but on the need to create an environment suited to man, aware of his needs. Thus, thanks to a series of technical advances, combination furniture is increasingly appreciated and used.

These pieces of furniture with multiple functions, which can be transformed into a dressing table, writing table or work table, are among the great successes of 18th century cabinetmaking. As for the seat, the elements that compose it seem to flow into each other, without the slightest interruption of the sinuous line which becomes encompassing. The chair frames are generally decorated with rich sculptures of flowers, foliage and shells. The most characteristic type of Louis XV seat is the bergère, a wide and deep armchair with an enveloping back known as a gondola.

One of them, called a marquise, is simply an enlarged armchair. Others are designed to accommodate three people. The basket-shaped sofa is widely available. The shapes affected by daybeds are also very variable, such as the duchess, which is distinguished by its gondola-shaped backrest. In the field of beds, the columned one from the century of Louis

The medium and small tables also reveal all the refinement obtained by the craftsmen of the golden age of French cabinetmaking. The variety seems to have no limit: pocket tray, jewelry holder, bedside table, work tables, knitters, chiffoniers...

The pieces used for writing are not left out. The simplest and most common models of these tables are the large flat desk and the roll top desk, a mid-century invention, probably due to Oeben. Alongside these desks for male use, cabinetmakers create more feminine furniture, desks of the greatest refinement, decorated with marquetry and bronze, like the happiness of the day. The large and rigid secretary with a flap revealing drawers was introduced around 1750. At the same time, an increasing number of native and exotic woods were flooding the market.

Craftsmen therefore had a very wide range of different veneer woods at their disposal to create complex marquetry, often with floral motifs, but sometimes also in the form of trophies, landscapes and realistic representations of domestic utensils.

The enthusiasm for oriental lacquers also allowed cabinetmakers to adapt them to furniture, by embedding either imported panels or European copies in gilded bronze frames. From the mid-1740s, wood craftsmen stamped their production – or were expected to do so – under the marble of chests of drawers, on the back of the belt of chairs and tables or in a place invisible enough so that the mark did not disturb the aesthetic unity of the furniture. the object.Since the beginning of the Rococo, voices have been raised against asymmetry and the abundant use of sinuous curves. Some in fact believed that this style was unworthy of French nature, always inclined to moderation and restraint.

Finally, following the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii, an enormous wave of enthusiasm for antiquity gradually swept away, around the years 1755-60, the Louis XV style in favor of what would become the new neo-classical ideal to which the reign of Louis XVI gave its hour of glory, although upon this king's accession to the throne in 1774, this style had already triumphed for many years.
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